


Home, Sweet Home

by sunfl0weryell0w



Category: Sekirei (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Aliens, Cohabitation, Family Shenanigans, Flashbacks, Gen, Humor, Implied/Referenced Relationships, Missing Scene, Multi, Not Beta Read, don't copy to another page, living in constant fear of the hannya, misuse of superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28617399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunfl0weryell0w/pseuds/sunfl0weryell0w
Summary: “I’ve been wondering, how was life at Izumo House before Minato-sama and I moved in?”Musubi asks a devastating question at breakfast.
Kudos: 4





	Home, Sweet Home

**Author's Note:**

> I regret and own nothing.

Miya hums to herself as she prepares breakfast, a cheerful little tune she picked up from Kusano’s favorite pre-school TV show. For the first time in months her house is filled with the energy of both her first feathers, adding to the cacophony that Izumo House had become under her wings. Loud and cheerful and so warm. Takehito would have loved it.

One after another they settle around the table, and to her joy all seats are occupied this wonderful morning.

“Ah, I really missed your cooking,” Kazehana says as she reaches for her share of breakfast, a rosy flush on her face despite the hour. “Somehow breakfast tastes different when Miya makes it.”

“Flatterer,” chides Miya, but she can’t keep down her smile.

“Kazehana-san used to be a resident?”

“Yes. For a while we moved in, after Takehito’s death. Miya needed the company.”

“That’s wonderful.” Musubi claps her hands, eyes sparkling. “I’ve been wondering, how was life at Izumo House before Minato-sama and I moved in? Since it was just Kagari-san and Uzume and Matsu, it must’ve been quiet.”

Matsu nearly chokes on her soup. She thought she had suppressed it, but prompted by that innocent question one of her most traumatic memories resurfaces with a vengeance.

* * *

It was so late in the night it was already morning, and she had amassed good karma by leaking information on shady proceedings to the responsible authorities, redirected some of the shady money via thirty-six detours to Miya’s account – for rent, obviously – and deleted the spam filter from Minaka’s inbox after she signed him up for twelve different porn subscriptions. There wasn’t much to do while in hiding.

Matsu tugged her jacket tighter around her frame and trudged down the stairs. Nighttime at Izumo House was the best. No one looked through the windows, and she could freely exchange the batteries in her loyal army of spy cams all around the inn.

The only downside to pulling an all-nighter was that she needed food to replenish her energy. Matsu’s stomach growled in anticipation as she opens the kitchen door. Maybe Miya had left her some onigiri in the fridge? Or oh, the saury from dinner? If push came to shove she could eat a can of peaches-

A cloud of biting smoke filled her vision, and she jerked back. A kitchen fire, this early? Something moved within the darkness, and for a split-second Matsu switched views to peer from the camera above the kitchen cabinets, but to no avail. She couldn't see a thing.

“You.”

“M-Miya?” she wheezed, and the relief that it wasn't a burglar lasted only until her captain turned her head.

“You will tell no one,” hissed Miya. The gleam of the knife in her hand mirrored the crazed light in her eyes and the fire above the wok. Hannya masks appeared from the black smoke and slowly multiplied until Matsu felt like a bug under a microscope. Small, insignificant, terrified out of her mind.

"Do you understand?"

“Okay,” squeaked Matsu. And then she fainted, probably.

* * *

As Matsu hacks and coughs Homura unwillingly recalls various, less than stellar moments during his time at the inn, none of which fit the description peaceful. Starting from Matsu sneaking her cameras into every nook and cranny to Uzume’s aversion of clothing his time at the inn had been _everything but peaceful_. It got only marginally better when Kazehana left a year ago “for secret reasons” that most likely include copious amounts of alcohol.

But before that, it was chaos.

Matsu and Kazehana were part of the First Discipline Squad, enshrouded by rumors of their legendary battle prowess, and he is rightfully wary of the full extend of their powers. And he has to admit, the first months he had been too polite to stop them. Like during his first New Year at the inn...

* * *

Homura stared at the assortment of bottles and cans on the dinner table. He calculated this to be about equal to the amount of alcohol the club he started working at sold during a busy evening.

“Isn’t that too much, even for you?”

“Not at all, since I’m sharing with Matsu and Uzume and Miya and you,” the culprit declared and pulled another plastic bag closer, the contents rattling and clinking. He doubted that the landlady would join the festivities; Miya still cooked up a storm to feed four Sekirei over the holidays to distract herself from this being the eve of the first year without her husband. Now she was holed up in her room, and Homura wasn’t sure if they wouldn’t be barraged by hannya for the amounts of alcohol Kazehana intended to consume.

“Neither of us is legally an adult.”

“Pish, drinking age is sixteen in Germany, that’s why I bought German beer at the international store,” said Kazehana and put more bottles on the table, or rather, balanced them on top of the cans in the structurally unsound approximation of a tower. “Or well, German-inspired beer. And sake. You can’t finish a year without sake. It’s just not done.”

“If you say so.”

“Don’t be so anxious, little brother. Miya won’t throw you out if you get drunk once.”

“That’s not the issue.”

“Then relax, it’s the end of the year!”

Famous last words. Not even ninety minutes later Homura regretted his decision to decline the club’s new year party with every fiber of his unstable being. Surrounded by empty bottles and cans, opened chips bags, and three increasingly drunk women he cursed past-him with the fury of a thousand suns.

Uzume hiccuped and wriggled away from the table to stand on unsteady legs. “You know, with Miya so sad I have to live up to my namesake. I gotta make her laugh again.”

Matsu was the first to catch on. “Strip! Goddess Uzume!”

“Uzume-”

Kazehana started to sway from side to side, ran her hands up her body to reach for the fastener of her dress. “It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes-”

How about no? Homura slowly inched towards the door. There were things he did not need to see, and if he retreated now he wouldn’t have to see his sisters naked. He couldn’t stop them if he wanted-

“Homura, do you think you can fit into Matsu’s dress?”

* * *

And then he spent the rest of the night cleaning up after them and making sure they were well-hydrated. The proverbial cake however took the time Matsu ordered half an erotic shop and had sent him there to fetch–

Homura shudders and tries this best to bury that memory under three metric tons of denial.

At the other end of the table Uzume sweats bullets. Musubi’s innocent comment – because the girl has not a single mean bone in her body – brings up a lot of stuff she shouldn’t have done. Maybe Izumo House had been a quieter place once, now that the Sahashi flock has grown to include four, but only a little.

Some of that noise might be her fault.

Uzume knows she’s responsible for the monthly “Please look for a job to pay rent, Uzume” followed by one to thirteen hannya appearing from the rising miasma of judgment, courtesy of Miya. She's accepted the blame for breaking two washing machines until she got the message and didn't try to wash her veils all at once. And her habit of running around less than dressed has gotten better now that she babysits Kusano sometimes. Really.

Fact is, you get used to not wearing clothes when you accidentally vanish the seams, or propagate the length of the MBI-issue examination gown to the fifty-sixth of its length, or unravel the stuff into its individual threads just by sneezing. Or accidentally do that to an adjuster’s lab coat. It’s a safer bet to just go naked, because adjusters have a habit to strip you for non-issued experimentation – anyway.

She might have flashed a lot of people, including the mailman, Seo, the guys who came over to repair the roof when a storm blew off tiles, the neighbor who wanted to fetch the package Miya accepted in his stead... fun times.

She doesn’t want to think about the time she created and modeled sexy underwear intended for Chiho to see and accidentally walked by Takehito-sensei’s shrine. Not that Takehito-sensei hasn’t seen all of her, being the main adjuster for all numbers up to fifteen. But no. Miya protects her husband’s virtue.

Now that Sahashi lives at the inn Uzume makes sure to wear normal clothes around the house, because unlike Homura he isn’t used to excessive female-bodied nudity.

But Izumo House, quiet? Nope, not ever.

“Yeah, not a lot happened before you guys moved in,” she lies through her teeth, daring the other initial residents to call her out with a wide grin. Maybe she doesn’t have the same blackmail ammunition that Matsu has, but she knows where they sleep. And she can make blankets restrain or strangle people remotely.

Next to Uzume Kazehana does her best not to glance at that one tatami mat that is marginally, minimally different in color. Barely visible, and only if you knew what you were looking for. If Miya ever noticed there would be hell to pay.

* * *

“Since Miya is visiting Takehito-sensei, I thought we could relieve her of some of her duties,” said Kazehana, on a clear spring day two years ago. Young, optimistic, and maybe one bottle in too deep to have helpful plans.

“That's when I thought, why don’t we do a spring cleaning? Uzume, you could wipe the ceiling – or no, the hallway with your veils.” She shoved a bucket into her little sister’s hands, water sloshing onto her pink shirt.

“There is a perfectly fine mop in the closet.”

“Nonsense, Homura my dear,” trilled Kazehana. “This is a lesson in fine control. Watch me.”

She twirled on the balls of her feet to pick up the dust and, with an elegant twist of her wrist, direct it out of the dining room and through the opened doors into the garden. A yellowish gray sheen settled over the grass. Kazehana put both hands on her hips to observe her work before she turned to her little siblings, ready to bask in their awe.

“And that’s how you do it.”

Homura sneezed. And again. And again. Just as she considered telling him to shut up his energy spiked. In her inner eye the house turned into a raging inferno. Thankfully, only the edge of a tatami burst into flame.

Uzume, bless her little heart, yelped and upended her bucket over the fire that merrily threatened to eat through the flooring. Kazehana breathed a sigh of relief then froze. A waterlogged floor. In Miya’s home.

“I think I’ll sit out on this one,” said Homura, sounding miserable, congested, and yet all too eager to escape. Kazehana yanked him towards the wet spot, horror rising in her chest at the thought of the hannya. Her ears still tingled with the lecture about upkeep of a traditional house when she spilled a dish of sake two months ago. An entire bucket…

“Oh, no, mister. First lesson: if Miya doesn’t notice, nothing happened.”

“But-”

“Nothing happened!”

* * *

In retrospect they could have exchanged the slightly scorched tatami for one from the upper rooms, but in her panic Kazehana hadn’t thought that far. Running to the other end of the country had sounded like a better idea.

Miya giggles at the sight of the initial residents, their faces an array of consternation, disbelief, disturbed horror, and resignation before they settle on grudging defeat. They are ready to go down with Uzume's lie.

“You could say that,” says Homura and picks at the umeboshi, nose wrinkling. Matsu nods, tears in her eyes from nearly suffocating, and accepts the glass of water Tsukiumi hands her.

“They became near siblings during those times,” Miya says and cups her cheek. She should let them have that dredge of dignity, once in a while. “Just like my dear husband would have wanted for them.”

“May he rest peacefully,” Kazehana adds then perks up. “Why did you want to know?”

Musubi hums and sets down her empty rice bowl. “You see, there are these Ashikabi and Sekirei who live in Minato-sama’s old apartment…”

**Author's Note:**

> Or, why raising superpowered aliens in labs and then assuming they're going to blend into human society just fine is not a good idea.


End file.
